Stephanie Baudet

                               Chapter One

She could hear him behind her, his footsteps feather-light. His once heavy frame that had bounded down the stairs was now ponderous and unsteady like a young child’s. This morning, though, she detected something that could hardly be called a spring in his step but which surely denoted a good day.

She’d learnt to gauge his health by the minutest signs; they were far more telling than his answers to the question. But that was Father, and she knew that she herself would probably be the same in these circumstances. God forbid that ever would be, though she knew there was a strong possibility. She wouldn’t dwell on that point.

She picked up the newspaper from the hall floor and glanced at the first page. August the first. Who would believe that it was four years, almost to the day, since this terrible war had started? So much had happened, not only to the world in general but to their family. If only it were possible to turn back the clock.

Four years ago her brother Alex had been a newly-qualified medical doctor like their father. Four years ago, Father had not been diagnosed. Now he was dying slowly, and she wouldn’t wish that on anyone; that waiting for death that crept up so insidiously and inevitably.

Harriet walked to the doorway of the surgery and stared into the room as if preoccupied with her plans for the day, tying her apron strings. She relived, as she did most mornings now, those days gone by, but nothing could bring them back. She’d been restless then, straining at her woman’s bonds, antagonistic, wanting her freedom. Now she wished with all her heart that she could go back to that peaceful time.

She felt a hand on her shoulder.

“Good morning, Harriet.” His voice was quieter than it used to be too. No, not quieter, he had always had a soft voice with more than a hint of his native Scottish, but it was weak now and had a slight quaver in it that had certainly never been there before.

She turned to face him and smiled and kissed the gaunt cheek, feeling the hollowness beneath her lips. She no longer had to reach up to kiss him; he was stooped and grey and had aged ten years in the last twelve months.

“How are you, Father?” she asked, as always trying to put an optimistic edge to her voice.

There was a fractional hesitation before he answered. “Not too bad. I had quite a good sleep. Only the thirst woke me up as usual, but I’ve come to a decision, Harriet. I’ll tell you at breakfast. Open up the surgery first.”

She could feel his eyes on her as she stepped into the room, although she knew he could no longer see her clearly. It was gloomy except for a fierce ray of sunshine that was forcing its way through a crack in the heavy velvet curtains at the tall bay window.

Harriet pulled the cords as she had done every morning for as long as she could remember, and the curtains swished open letting in the summer sunshine and exposing the splendour of the room. It had been an excellent choice for a doctor’s consulting room. Apart from the good London location, she knew that this room had been the deciding factor when Father had bought the house before she was born.

The light made the huge, leather-topped oak desk gleam. All the furniture was heavy oak including the tall filing cabinet in one corner, but the room was large enough to accommodate it all and still look spacious.

The twin burgundy leather chairs matched the curtains: a rich, red wine velvet stretching from the high Victorian ceiling to the floor.

A large fireplace dominated the left hand wall, iron box set with newspaper and coal ready for the touch of a match as soon as the evenings started to draw in. Above it was a Turner print, wispy and ethereal.

“It’s going to be another hot day, Father,” Harriet said, reaching to tear a page off a calendar bearing a picture of the Yorkshire Dales. “It’s the first of August. How much longer is this war going to last? Do you remember after it started they said it would be over by Christmas?” She laughed, humourlessly. “Now here we are four years later, nineteen eighteen …” She looked up and caught the fleeting look of pain on her father’s face.

Then he turned and began to shuffle towards the kitchen.

Harriet still stood in the surgery. “It’s got to end soon,” she said, as much to herself than anything. “Then Alex will be home again. In no time at all he’ll be taking over this practice, you’ll see.”

She knew it was all pretence and that he knew it too. If his son, Alex, survived the war, he may well take over the practice, or start it up again, as their father had been unable to work for a year now. But they both knew that he would never see that day.

One of the desk drawers was slightly open and one ear piece of a stethoscope was jamming it, preventing its closure. Harriet opened the drawer fully and stared at the instrument, knowing that she had dusted in here yesterday as usual and left everything tidy. Even though she knew that her father often came in here to reminisce, the poignant picture that arose in her mind of him putting on the stethoscope brought tears to her eyes.

She picked it up and fingered it lovingly, remembering the numerous times when she was a child that he’d let her listen to her heart, and his, and Alex’s before he was born. Alex’s fluttering foetal heart in their mother’s belly. Alex, whose emergence into the world to begin his life had ended that of their mother.

“What are you doing?” her father asked from the hall.

She replaced the stethoscope quietly. “I’m coming, Father. Let’s go and have breakfast.”

But still she didn’t move. Looking around the room, she shivered despite the warm day. There was a musty unused feeling even though, day after day, she went through the same ritual of opening it up. It was a sham, keeping the surgery as it was, all ready for use as if Doctor Alfred Baker was about to open his doors to patients as he had done for twenty years.

The heavy wooden filing cabinet that stood in the corner was once chock full of record cards; patients who had by now found another physician, reluctantly, maybe, but unavoidably. He’d struggled on, weakened and emaciated from the ravages of diabetes, long after he should have stopped.

Harriet caught up with him and took his arm. “Are you feeling hungry this morning?” She immediately regretted saying such a frivolous and stupid thing under the circumstances.

She looked into his face as they entered the kitchen, and she could feel how much he now needed her support with the condition of his foot obviously worsening.

He smiled at her and she was reminded of a grinning skull, for that’s all his face was now. A skull covered with skin. Only his eyes remained really alive; they had not changed. They were deep blue and full of humour. Thank God he had not lost that.

“That’s what I want to talk to you about,” he said, limping ahead of her into the kitchen.

“You must let me look at that foot,” she said, noting his awkwardness, but he shook his head.

“Father, you should have a doctor look at it.”

“I am a doctor! I can deal with it, Harriet.”

That’s what he always said. It was to protect her, she knew, not because she wasn’t capable. She’d been helping him in his surgery ever since she could remember and was more than able to dress a wound. But this was no ordinary wound; this was advanced gangrene. Despite the heavy bandaging she could always smell it. The putrid odour of rotting flesh pervaded the house despite her liberal and frequent sprinkling of lavender water. They rarely spoke of his foot except for her offers to dress it, but he’d never even let her see it. By the way he walked now she wondered whether he had any toes left at all.

“If there’s one thing that’s come out of this war it’s an advancement in medical knowledge,” she said. “There may be palliative treatments for gangrene so that you’d be more comfortable. That’s why having another doctor visit could be helpful.”

His response was a snort. She wondered whether it was worth calling a doctor even though it would evoke his fury. But he would just send him away.

“I’ve decided,” he said, lowering himself onto a kitchen chair, “to give up the diet.”

Harriet caught her breath and felt her heart plummet. This decision had been inevitable, but now that the time had come she felt sudden panic. Like all inevitabilities, one still kept kidding oneself instead of facing it.

She sank down into a chair opposite him, her mouth so dry that she was unable to speak.

“Look at me,” he said, waving his hand to indicate his thin body. “We all know that there is no cure for diabetes and no way of even controlling it. It’s a death sentence and we’ve known that from the start. For the little time I have left I am going to try to enjoy my food.”

Harriet felt tears welling up and she blinked them away, standing up to put on the gas and busying herself with the kettle so that, for a moment, she needn’t think of what he’d said or what it meant. Finally, when she felt that her emotions were under control, she sat down again, facing him.

For a moment they just looked at each other, father and daughter, too choked up to speak, knowing that by stopping his near-starvation diet and eating more normal food he was only bringing forward the inevitable. His days were numbered and had been ever since he’d diagnosed the condition nearly three years ago. He’d been frank with his children then. They’d both known what the outcome would be, but now his decision had made it an imminent reality.

Harriet got up again and poured two cups of tea, her hand shaking so much that half of it went into the saucer.

“Here you are, Father. Nice and strong, just as you like it.” Their eyes met and they both smiled. It was a tragedy, Harriet thought, that it had taken his illness to bring them together.

“And I’ll have a slice of toast and marmalade,” he said, with twinkle in his eye.

The letterbox rattled in the hall, but Harriet ignored it and continued to spread the toast with a thin layer of butter and marmalade. She knew that he had heard it too and felt the same dread tinged with eagerness, yet they had nothing to fear from the post, had they? Bad news always came by telegram.

She passed the plate of toast to her father and went out into the hall, trying to act normally, trying not to think, as if, childlike, not thinking about it would make it disappear and turn this whole unbearable situation into a bad dream that she would wake from and find that her father was not dying, but was smilingly showing a patient into the surgery. And Alex would be calling cheerio as he left for the hospital.